Jim Thorpe Area School District is preparing to update its search policy for the first time in two decades, adding provisions for random searches of students’ belongings as officials work to address contraband entering school buildings.

The proposed policy would allow the district to conduct searches using a randomization system rather than targeting specific students. Officials could select a bus, a row of lockers, or even an entire classroom for search on any given day.

“We’re really fighting with vape and things like that. So what we’re looking at is these random searches,” Superintendent Rob Presley told the school board during a January workshop Wednesday.

The approach would involve using a randomizer to select which areas to search, ensuring no individual students are being singled out.

“We would make buses, locker numbers, maybe even like a pod classroom, and just say we’re taking this classroom this morning. We’re searching that classroom,” Presley said. “We pull it up, we push a randomizer and we say, OK, locker numbers here to here are going to be searched. Then you call the students out for the locker, you search the locker, they go back to class.”

District officials believe random searches could serve as a deterrent to students bringing prohibited items to school.

“I believe doing the random searches, when they know that you could possibly get chosen, would really help us in cutting down on some of these things,” Presley said.

The policy would bring the district in line with practices already used by other districts and Intermediate Unit programs.

“The law does allow us to do it,” Presley said.

He emphasized that random searches serve a different legal purpose than targeted searches based on reasonable suspicion. Under the proposed policy, the district could not use the random search system to target specific students, even if staff members suspected them of bringing contraband to school.

“I can’t say, oh, I really know Jerry, he’s always bringing something, so I’m going to randomly search his row of lockers,” Presley said. “I can’t do that because I don’t have a reasonable suspicion that today he brought something in. Now I am singling out somebody and that is illegal.”

For situations where school officials have reasonable suspicion about a specific student, existing search protocols would still apply. Those searches require only reasonable suspicion rather than the probable cause standard used by police officers.

The district’s current search policy dates to 2004 and does not address random searches conducted without individualized suspicion of wrongdoing. The updated policy extensively revises the district’s approach to searches overall as laws and court cases have clarified what schools can and cannot do.

“Our search policy is from 2004,” Presley said. “This is way outdated.”

Under the proposed policy, any time a random search occurs, the district would document the process carefully, including how areas were selected for search and who conducted the searches. Parents would be notified whenever their student’s possessions were searched.

The high school already maintains detailed documentation for all searches conducted.

High School Assistant Principal Avery Hower provided details on the current system.

“Anytime that there’s a search completed, whether it’s founded or not, we fill out a search form that’s documented and it is filed in the student’s file in the office. Parents get called too,” Hower said.

High school officials, she added, have found around 25 vapes so far this school year based on tips and alerts from detection equipment.

“We have to go off of every tip and take every tip seriously,” she said.

Presley indicated the documentation system used at the high school could be extended to the other buildings for consistency.

When conducting any search of a student, school officials take the student to a private location such as an office or bathroom. If a student refuses to cooperate with a search, the district contacts parents and police.

“If (a student) denies us and we know it’s there, you can call the police to come do it,” Presley said. “A lot of times when we tell them we’re going to call your parents and the police, they don’t want that.”

Board members raised no objections to the random search provisions during the committee meeting discussion.

The updated search policy will appear on a future board agenda for formal approval.